Sunday, April 13, 2014

SELFIE...

On a recent phone call, my son informed me he had read
around 10 pieces from this blog."Dad, I got bored and thought I could be watching HBO instead, so
that's what I did."I took no
offense.That he was reading them
at all was a triumph for me.One of
the reasons I decided to write this at all was to show my children I wasn't
crushed nor was I going to just fade away into the night under a cover of shame
and embarrassment.The other
reason not to take umbrage was these comments were coming from a member of a
generation which has raised the art of navel gazing to a sacrament, so
naturally commentaries on politics, foreign policy, circumspection or theology
will create a dissonance forcing them to look up and actually perceive what is
going on around them.

This is now the era of the selfie.You buy a cell phone now, not to make or receive a call, but rather
based on the quality of the camera...whether there is on the front and the
back...the ease with which it allows you to take pictures of you.It gets even more convoluted.Studies show people don't actually want
to talk to each other directly over the phone.They prefer to text or email or leave a voice message or
post a message on Facebook than engage in actual live conversation.The phone is ordered for its screen
size, touch screen, design, with its actual function as a phone a long, last, concern
now resembling an electronic vestigial organ.

I find myself chortling at the irony of coming from the generation which
grew up in the 60's and was accused of narcissism on an Olympian level."It" was all about tuning in,
turning on and dropping out...make love not war...yippies and hippies vs.
straights...we had to have our own music and clothes (sort of dumpster chic)
and our politics...we took drugs to turn inward and see ourselves clearly,
allegedly.Today, "it"
is all about taking pictures of myself and chronicling everything and anything
I do.

I'm now officially the old, curmudgeonly, grumpy old man shaking his
liver-spotted fist at the non-sense of his children's generation.It is a natural progression and
flashing in front of me is Dick Van Dyke in Bye, Bye, Birdie singing about kids
and why can't they be perfect like we were in every way.However, this obsessive need to share
and over share with religious-like fervor still cannot be left without some
comment.

Why would I care about where you ate breakfast, lunch or dinner
today?Tens of thousands of
pictures are uploaded to the "cloud"(oh come on you have to love the "cloud"...it now
refers to some gigantic storage unit in the sky when for us it was a way to get
a contact high in the back of someone's car or their bedroom) of what people
ate at their latest meal.(the
next logical progression is the uploading of what it looks like at the other
end, an evolution not to look forward to with relish)The phone you don't call anyone on anymore tracks your every
movement so your friends, and "friendly" big brother, can know what
stores you frequent, restaurants you like, concerts you attend, political
rallies you support.The phone
which no longer has any connection to Alexander Graham Bell, is a game-playing,
picture taking, electronic spying mirror which can be used to catalog every
moment of your day.While the
premise of all of this is it builds community...keeps us connected to each
other...makes us feel social...the same folks who don't want to talk to each
other...sit across from each other in a restaurant staring at their
phones...refuse to make eye contact when they are pedestrianatiing (and now
have to be warned by public service announcements not to cause auto accidents
because of their inattention)...completely avoid any intimacy with anyone
else.(they use dating sites
because they can't "meet" anyone any other way)

The ultimate beneficiary of all this is corporate America.(you remember them don't you?They keep telling you they wont do any
evil and only want to connect the world and are not at all interested in making
money off of you)Samsung got huge
returns by encouraging Ellen DeGeneres to take a "selfie" at the
Oscars.(do you think she was
paid?)Boston Red Sox slugger,
David Ortiz used a Samsung phone to take a "selfie" with President
Obama.All the mega data being
created each day by all the texting and tweeting and pictures and sharing is
vacuumed up by advertisers so they can pitch you, prod you, push you, play you
into buying their product.(not to
mention what the NSA is doing with all of this information)Facebook spent $19 billion to buy
"What's App" to commoditize every "intimate" activity we
have with anyone else.Hell, we
don't even ask for directions anymore (something 60's men were supposedly very
bad at) and now use Google maps to get from point A to point B leaving a trail
of electronic bread crumbs for anyone to follow and observe.(ANYONE !!)

It is not surprising this kind of long form blog could be boring.Try and reduce discussions about health
care or the Russian incursion into Crimea or the raging debate about same sex
marriage to 140 characters.Is it possible
young people are not more liberal on social issues, like gay marriage or the
legalization of marijuana, than their parents, but rather just take a pass on
anything not reducible to a tweet or a selfie?

Yes, I sound like my parents and
their horror over Elvis' hips or the Beatles hair.However, watching an entire generation turn themselves into
a product for corporate profit...observing the emergence of a device even
George Orwell couldn't imagine...commenting on narcissism on steroids was too
good to pass up.An additional
benefit is it gave me a reason to write about my son, who I love, and the pride
I have knowing that he is purposely reading some of this blog even if he gets bored.

4 comments:

Schools are very strange places these days. Walk through open areas in any school and see the majority of kids looking at a small screen, and not interacting with each other. In the classroom they can't keep their hands off their phones, so some teachers have started giving them a two-minute "technology break" every twenty minutes or so so that they can get their fix.